[ronsr]

I formatted floppy discs with FAT12 (by mistake) for use with my Mavica FD75 at my son's wedding. Now when I try to recover the photos with Preview or any other viewer on my MAC G4 running OS 10.4, the message I get is that they are unreadable. They show up great using the camera; so they are intact. What software or method do I use to convert the format to FAT16/32 or to read them as FAT12 on my MAC?? Thanks for any help.

[mdawson]

FAT, or FAT12, was replaced by FAT16 in 1987, so I would have question why circa 2000/1 Sony would include the option to format a floppy in a long dead file structure. As the Mac OS began supporting PC volumes with the PowerPC transition in 1994, Macs have never had native support for FAT12 or at the very least abandoned such support in OS X. I do not think that Windows even supports FAT12 anymore given that XP will not allow the user to create a FAT32 volume?at least that has been my experience when formatting hard drives or attempting to reformat a flash drive in XP; NTFS is the only formatting option that appears.

Any utility that would convert a FAT12 volume to another file structure would need to do so by reformatting it, deleting your photos in the process. Your best bet is to Goggle utilities that permit you to read FAT12 volumes, but I strongly suspect that any such utilities will be Windows-only.

[ronsr]

The culprit besides me, is the MAC Disk Utility which has as choices, both DOS and DOS (FAT12). When I wanted to erase and reformat the floppies, I didn't notice that there were two available and incorrectly chose the DOS FAT12. Pictures of my son's wedding will be precious in years to come so there has to be a way. I can view them in the camera which probably has an old PC processor capable of reading FAT12.

[ronsr]

I have a PC computer with WINDOWS 2000 and have tried to view the images on it. But it also comes back with an error message. If there is a WINDOWS program that will read the images and convert them, then I could send them via network to the MAC.

Thanks for replying.

[mdawson]

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ronsr wrote:

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The culprit besides me, is the MAC Disk Utility which has as choices, both DOS and DOS (FAT12).

Either you have an older version of OS X or you are seeing options that are only available for floppies; which actually makes sense given the 32 MB limit for FAT12.

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ronsr wrote:

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I can view them in the camera which probably has an old PC processor capable of reading FAT12.

It would not be the camera?s processor so much as the firmware: software hard-coded on a ROM or flash memory. Given a floppy?s extremely low capacity, FAT12 is good enough, but by the same token Sony should have avoided supporting a format that was obsolete a decade before that particular camera hit the market. If anything the incompatibility would have forced you to reformat or replace the disk before you took your photos.

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ronsr wrote:

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I have a PC computer with WINDOWS 2000 and have tried to view the images on it. But it also comes back with an error message.

No a surprise there. Windows 2000 is built atop the NT kernel that was developed by Microsoft in the early 1990s as the core for a more modern operating system. As the NT kernel was designed initially for Microsoft?s corporate/professional OS, it is not surprising that it would not support a file structure that was obsolete by the time Windows NT was introduced in 1993; NT supports its native NTFS file structure and was given cross-compatibility with FAT16 then later FAT32. FAT was the native file format for Windows 3.x/95/98/Me, which were all built atop MS-DOS.

ronsr wrote:
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If there is a WINDOWS program that will read the images and convert them, then I could send them via network to the MAC.

Googling FAT12 data recovery software seems to only find utilities for recovering data from damaged volumes, but that may be exactly what you need. Here is one place to start looking. In any case should you successfully extract the files from the floppy, you can transfer the files to your Mac by any standard means.

FYI: It is Mac and Windows and not MAC and WINDOWS, particularly as MAC (Media Access Control) implies something else.

[ronsr]

Thanks for the URL to Free Fat12 site. I will try some of them. I have tried a couple of Windows recovery software programs. They list the files okay, but do not convert them. So when I try to view the image, they call on and use the Image software that is bundled with 2000, which won't read it.

Thanks again for your effort. - Ron

[dougster]

-Hi,

If you get to where you can't find a way maybe take it to Kinko's which is now FedEx Office. A buddy had some data on an old DOS 5" disk about 3 yrs ago and they got the data for him. Just a thought if nuttin works. Good luck...

[ronsr]

Doug I am stuck. So will take your advice. Thaanks - Ron

[mdawson]

Good luck. Let us know how things turn out. Memories like those should not be lost due to (obsolete) technology.